Chicago Public Schools has asked a Cook County judge on Monday to fast-track the district’s civil rights lawsuit against the state of Illinois, warning of dire consequences for students if a funding issue isn’t resolved quickly.

More than $100 million in the red and on the hook for a $721 million teacher pension payment in June, CPS said it could cut the school year as short as June 1 if money doesn’t come through soon from the state. Students typically end school a few weeks later.

The district recently filed a civil rights lawsuit against Gov. Bruce Rauner and the Illinois State Board of Education, alleging that the state’s ways of funding schools and pensions created “separate but unequal” schools systems in which CPS, whose students are predominantly poor and minority, get less money than their wealthier, white counterparts elsewhere in the state.

District officials are asking Judge Franklin Valderrama to issue a ruling before the end of April.

Forrest Claypool has scheduled a 4 o’clock press conference today, so I’m assuming he’ll blame a potentially shortened school year on Gov. Rauner. The school year had been scheduled to end June 20th.

As a first step toward ending the State’s discriminatory funding of teacher pension obligations, on June 30, 2016, the Illinois House amended Senate Bill 2822 to include an additional State contribution of $215 million to assist CPS to meet its required Fiscal Year 2017 teacher pension payment of $721 million. Even that $215 million pension funding for CPS would stand in stark contrast to the State’s projected Fiscal Year 2017 payment to TRS of $4.0 billion. Amended Senate Bill 2822 passed both houses of the General Assembly.

But on December 1, 2016, Governor Rauner vetoed the bill. Governor Rauner stated that he had agreed to support the bill only if the General Assembly agreed to his other demands on legislation having nothing to do with CPS. As a result, CPS’s children - 90% children of color - are at risk of forever losing their one chance in life to receive a quality education. Prior to the veto, CPS already had taken drastic measures to meet its budget obligations and educate its students. At the end of Fiscal Year 2013, CPS had a positive general operating fund balance of $949 million. By the end of Fiscal Year 2016, CPS had depleted all of that reserve and ended with a negative general operating fund balance of $127 million. In other words, CPS’s general operating fund balance has declined by $1.1 billion in just three years. Over that same time period, CPS made required pension payments totaling $1.9 billion. In that same three years, the State’s discriminatory funding has shortchanged CPS by $1.1 billion. […]

The February 22 budget cuts do not fill the $215 million hole created by Governor Rauner’s veto. If CPS must re-balance its budget by making additional cuts, those cuts will be even more painful. If CPS ends the school year on June 1 - instead of June 20 - students will receive fewer days of instruction. If students are not in class, they forever lose those days of learning. There is no way to compensate for missed time in the classroom. If CPS eliminates summer school for grade-school and middle-school students, those children will not receive the additional instruction they require to get on track. Those children are at risk of falling even farther behind.

*** UPDATE *** From Illinois Secretary of Education Beth Purvis…

As children statewide continue to be impacted by the state’s broken school funding formula, now is the time for CEO Claypool to engage in a constructive process to pass a balanced budget with changes that would help schools across the state, including those in Chicago.

Maybe CPS should have thought about all of this debt piling up when they went along with the City to skip the pension payment 17 times. Don’t even want to hear from CTU who rolled along with them on this fiscal disaster train.

Here’s the core of everything PR wise. The whole game. Will the public blame the guy that’s been in for 3 years? Or the years of mis management? This could be the worst possible news for AFSCME. Kids will get the sympathy if there’s any to give.

Gotta love Illinois politicians and civic leaders. Always blame someone else for your troubles. CPS has no one to blame but the mayors of Chicago and their school board for this mess. Before we give them one penny we should demand that the district be reformed, taken out of the hands of the mayor and Karen Lewis and that the number of schools be sized to the current population.

–CPS has no one to blame but the mayors of Chicago and their school board for this mess. Before we give them one penny we should demand that the district be reformed, taken out of the hands of the mayor and Karen Lewis and that the number of schools be sized to the current population. –

Does this state takeover come with state accountability and responsibility?

Geez, it was just a few years ago that Citizen Rauner thought that CPS was doing a swell job. That’s why he kept throwing so much campaign money at Daley and Emanuel, and got hooked up with his own taxpayer-funded charter network.

Wha’ happen? Where did the love go?

I bet you have no idea at all about any of Rauner’s deep hooks into CPS before he became governor.

The whole state wide funding system seems broken to me. I believe the Illinois Constitution requires the State to provide the primary funding and this has been held to be aspirational and not a mandate.
However this suit says Chicago children get less but is that not the city’s fault? I believe the city schools actually get more state money than a rich district like Hinsdale or New Trier. So let the city increase the property tax and pay for their own schools like the suburbs who bear a much larger property tax burden than Chicago. Then figure out a fair system for all.

No, it is actually the point. CPS traded (although they received some offset) pension funding for a huge amount of independence.

It was purposeful and intentional. By statute, the ISBE has very little oversight over CPS. They have an entire set of rules that do not apply to anyone else.

And then there is the CPS Block Grant. If the received their state funding through the regular process (formula) they would receive significantly less based on available local resources and actual attendance.

CPS has huge challenges, but to somehow argue that they are being discriminated against or that the balance is tipped against them is totally false. They have money issues and like a person that is drowning, they will grasp at anything to stay afloat, even a false argument.

JS. It’s even better when you think about how CPS got everything they wanted. First slice of grant pie, independence, and no real ISBE oversight. It was great they got all they asked for until now. When the spending catches up. Close a third of the schools. No more neighborhood schools. You want back in the state. Submit and be accountable for attendance reflecting funding like the rest of the state.

JS Mill, and CPS/CTPF/CTU took that “offset” of which you speak, ONE BILLION DOLLARS, and spent it on health care subsidies for “selected” retirees. CTPF is lucky the IRS is understaffed or they could have lost their qualified plan status.

It is so sad that the entire strategy is a publicity stunt predicated upon finding an activist judge to issue a decision that breaks with existing Illinois case precedents and then hope that the Illinois Supreme Court votes on a party line basis and overturns its own past decisions.